1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tray loading type storage medium drive apparatus for a plurality of kinds of circular storage media such as a compact-disk read-only memory (CD-ROM).
2. Description of the Related Art
In a prior art tray loading type storage medium drive apparatus, a plurality of circular recesses for accommodating a plurality of kinds of circular storage media such as a 12-cm CD-ROM medium and an 8-cm CD-ROM medium are coaxially formed on a tray. A plurality of stationary claw pieces are provided along an outer periphery of an outermost one of the circular recesses. The stationary claw pieces are partly protruding over the outer circular recess. This will be explained later in detail. When a 12-cm CD-ROM medium is mounted on the tray which is vertically installed, the 12-cm CD-ROM medium is mounted within the outer circular recess and is supported by the stationary claw pieces, so that the 12-cm CD-ROM medium does not drop from the tray.
On the other hand, when an 8-cm CD-ROM medium is mounted on a tray that is vertically installed, the stationary claw pieces cannot support the 8-cm CD-ROM medium. Therefore, a 12-cm diameter adapter for encapsulating the 8-cm CD-ROM medium will be required. Since the 12-cm diameter adapter serves as a 12-cm CD-ROM medium, the 12-cm diameter adapter can be mounted within the outer circular recess and supported by the stationary claw pieces. In this case, however, when the 12-cm diameter adapter is rotated at a high speed such as 5000 rpm, the 8-cm CD-ROM medium may become dislodged from the 12-cm diameter adapter.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a tray loading type storage medium drive apparatus capable of supporting a plurality of kinds of circular storage media without an adapter even when the tray is vertically installed.
According to the present invention, in a tray loading type storage medium drive apparatus, a plurality of circular recesses for accommodating a plurality of kinds of circular storage media having different diameters to each other are coaxially formed on a tray. A plurality of movable claw pieces are provided along an outer periphery of an outermost one of the circular recesses. The movable claw pieces are capable of partly protruding over each of the circular recesses.